New Faculty

The Department of World Languages and Literatures welcomes our newest Assistant Professor.

Alexandra Gonzenbach Perkins received her B.A. in Spanish and Art History and M.A. in Spanish from The University of Alabama. She holds a Ph.D. in Romance Studies from the University of Miami.

Dr. Perkins’s research interests include 20th and 21st century Latin American narrative, theatre, and performance. Her research methodology engages queer theory, performance studies, theories of space, and phenomenology. Her current research project investigates how Latin American performers combine virtual technologies, the body, and the space of international theatre and performance festivals to create new ways of expressing, challenging, and reshaping the connections between gender and nationality throughout Latin America. She is the author of Representing Queer and Transgender Identity: Fluid Bodies in the Hispanic Caribbean and Beyond, published with Bucknell University Press in 2017. This monograph analyzes how transgender and queer people use the representational strategies available in narrative, theatre, graphic novels, and performance in order to redefine national belonging. She has published articles on issues of queer identity, performance, and Latin American narrative in the journals Chasqui, Romance Studies, Decimonónica, and Letras Femeninas.